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The Pentagon wants to shield funding for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jet even as it faces sequestration reductions. "We'll try to protect F-35," said Pentagon weapons purchasing chief Frank Kendall, speaking at a defense conference. "There's no question about its priority. Despite sequestration, we'll still have a budget that's adequate to support F-35." The F-35 program has been plagued with cost overruns and the GAO estimates it will cost $400 billion. But Kendall said the F-35 would give the U.S. needed "dominance in the air."

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Lockheed Martin has unveiled the first of 42 F-35 fighter jets to be built for Japan. "Anyone thinking about challenging Japan will have to think about dealing with the F-35," said Frank Kendall, Defense Department acquisitions chief.

Even with the threat of sequestration budget cuts, the Navy isn't likely to change its order for F-35 fighter jets, says Frank Kendall, undersecretary for defense. Some sources have suggested that if sequestration isn't halted, the Navy may delay some of its F-35 buys. But Kendall told the Reuters Aerospace and Defense Summit that the fighter is still a top priority. "I don't see any indication that the Navy is going to change its plans in any fundamental way," Kendall said.

Frank Kendall, the undersecretary for acquisition at the Pentagon, recommended that Lockheed Martin restore a safety valve on the F-35 jet. The 2-pound valve system was eliminated in 2008 to save weight on the F-35.

The military will have to undergo "draconian changes to force structure and modernization" as a result of sequestration, says Christine Fox, director of the Pentagon's primary cost analysis group, because the Pentagon can't squeeze enough reductions out of base closings and efficiencies alone. Under the cuts, "[w]e'd have to do terrible things to modernization," she says, a process that would affect upgrades of weapons programs.

The Pentagon is now laying plans to deal with sequestration, having concluded it's unlikely to be averted before the March 1 deadline, said Frank Kendall, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. "As we read the tea leaves right now, the odds of sequestration happening, at least getting implemented initially, hopefully not for very long, are reasonably high," Kendall said.